Buried Undead
by lizzierimmsy
Summary: "That's the last time I ever trust a psychopath!" **Spoilers for series twelve** Based on where I thought Rimmer was, up until the others found him in a waste disposal box. A few tweaks had to be made, or it wouldn't make sense.


Darkness was all there was after wondering if he, Arnold J. Rimmer, was next in line to be inexplicably hacked into. Whatever happened to him, it felt like no time had passed at all.

"Where am I?" he wondered. He knocked on a wall multiple times. He felt around and realised wherever he was felt cramped. Finally the comprehension of his whereabouts struck him harder than a lorry. "I've been buried alive!"

These so-called cured evildoers were still evildoing; they were using one of his worst fears against him. God only knew what the others were going through. But all Rimmer could think of was his own predicament and how he'd get out of it.

He repeatedly screamed for help — no-one was coming for him. "This is a nightmare. Nothing's worse than being buried alive! How can anything be worse than this?!" He heard someone clambering around outside. Someone was finally there to rescue him. He let out a sigh of relief. "Thank God! I didn't think you were ever going to save me!"

But whoever it was went past him. _Right — smegging — past him_. He knew he'd pissed the boys off on a regular basis, but this was just uncalled for.

"Lister, if that's you, you can forget about going on report for this! You're painting the smegging ship for the next eight weeks!"

No response. In fact, whoever it was couldn't actually hear him. Of course Rimmer didn't realise this and kept on ranting.

"Do you seriously think you can get away with blatantly ignoring a superior officer? _That_ , miladdio, is a direct violation of space corps. directive eight-zero-five!" _Or was it eight-zero-seven?_ Whatever it was, they were in violation of it. Then Rimmer stopped ranting. The thought occurred that perhaps his captor realised he was a hologram that couldn't be killed and had come back to finish the job.

 _"That's what they do, isn't it? Bury you alive, then make out that your a hologram, unbury you, take you to the nearest cliff and shove you over the edge!"_

 _But there were no cliffs on this moon._

 _"Oh, shut up! What do you know?! You're just the left side of my brain!"_

Rimmer heard footsteps. They were getting closer and closer by the second. He shrunk back as best as he could inside the tiny space he was in. He shut his eyes tight enough to give himself a slight headache. The footsteps continued on, gradually sounding as if they were getting further away until Rimmer could no longer hear them. Mollified, he let out a quavering exhale.

* * *

Dave Lister stirred. "What's going on?" Quickly, he woke up only to be greeted by a laser pointed right at his love spuds; it seemed to have turned on as soon as he awoke.

Lister screamed and thrashed about, trying to escape to no avail; he was tied down. He realised flaying wasn't going to do him any favours. He needed to approach this with calm equilibrium. He jiggled his leg repeatedly; eventually, his boot flew off and landed right into his hands. He grabbed the knife he had hidden inside of it. Lister must have unknowingly contracted Felicitous Populi in that instant; he was able to sever the ropes.

He broke free, hopped out of the way and stood there a short moment to revel in his small victory. "Sometimes life is good," he said to himself.

The laser still ran; he didn't have time to try and figure out how to shut it off. He bolted off to find the others. He hurried down a corridor. Halfway through he found Kryten's body wandering around, bumping into walls. His head was missing.

"Kryten," Lister approached him. "What have they done to you? Where's your head?"

He began frantically moving his hands and arms about as if he were a headless marionette.

"I can't understand sign language, Kryten."

Calmly, he gestured the same movements once more.

"It's no good signing slower! I don't understand sign language! Have you lost your mind?"

Kryten pointed to where his head would've been and held his arms out as if to say, "I don't have a mind _to_ lose!"

Lister shrugged and gave up. "C'mon, let's go find the others,"

He pointed to his missing head again.

"Yeah, and your head..."

Kryten started walking off in a different direction than Lister. He grabbed Kryten, pulled him and got him on the right track.

* * *

Moments later the two found Kryten's head impaled on a mop hangle. After that, they found the Cat locked in the water tank, nearly drowning. All that was left was Rimmer.

Lister called out for Rimmer, again and again, each time sounding more and more panicked. "You getting anything?"

Kryten checked the psi-scan. "According to this, Mr. Rimmer is still on _Starbug_."

They sprinted toward the landing bay where _Starbug_ was parked. The psi-scan beeped quicker the closer they got to the cockpit. When they entered they found Rimmer was nowhere to be seen.

"Are you sure that thing isn't on the fritz again, Krytes?"

Kryten whipped around with the psi-scan, observing every inch of the cockpit. "We should be right on top of him!"

"I'm not seeing him." Lister said as he began to move from one spot to another.

Cat swiftly grabbed him, stopping him. "Watch out, bud!"

"What?"

The Cat pointed down at something on the floor of _Starbug —_ Rimmer's light bee. If Lister wasn't looking, he really would've been on top of him, and not in a fun way.

Swiftly, Lister picked up the tiny projection device. He attempted to communicate to him, but couldn't hear Rimmer responding, frantically begging him to help.

"Rimmer, can't you hear me?"

"Can't you?! I'm shouting at the top of my voice here!" Rimmer cried.

"It's no use, sir. His light bee has been hacked. He can't communicate with us verbally, and he can't willingly turn his projection back on."

Lister sighed. "So what do we do?"

"I suggest we head back to _Red Dwarf_ and get to the Holo Suite to better assess the problem and bring him online."

Cat let out an exasperated groan. "Do we have to?"

"Yeah, we do," Lister replied, nodding. "Now get in your seat and let's scarper."

At that point Lister didn't feel any remorse for leaving the Evils behind. He nearly lost his crew and almost had to wave bye-bye to his other two best friends. Anyone who puts someone through that was definitely not worth saving.

* * *

Back on _Red Dwarf,_ the three of them stood in various spots in the H-P Suite. Rimmer's light bee was connected to the main computer; Kryten tried to get him back up-and-running — the operative word being "tried". It was tougher than vindaloo brisket, but still nothing he couldn't handle. Unfortunately, it took a hard reboot to bring Rimmer back, with the painstakingly long process of downloading Rimmer's personality and memory.

"No point in waiting, sirs. Loading the neuroses alone takes longer than _Schindler's List._ "

So Lister and Cat played a couple of practice rounds of five card poker while Kryten monitored the start-up process.

Cat still couldn't quite get the grasp of a poker face. As soon as Lister gave him a new set of five cards he grinned widely, as if he had hooks on either side of his mouth.

"How many—? Oh for smegsake, Cat! We've been at this for an hour!"

"I can't help it," he said as he slid his cards back to Lister to be reshuffled. "I'm not gonna get this pokey face thing!"

"It's _poker_ face."

"Whatever! I only need to know how to do it, not how to say it!"

"Let's try it again," Lister exasperatedly said.

He gave himself and the Cat five new cards, at which point Kryten came waddling in with the intent to give them some news. For some strange reason, he had something embedded in his rubber head, looking as if he had a single antennae.

"Sirs—"

"Hang on, Krytes," Lister looked at the Cat with a blank face. "How many cards do you want to change?"

Cat's eyes went from Kryten to Lister, back and forth until the finally landed on Lister. He didn't say anything, he simply threw his cards in the air; all of them came floating down gently like feathers. Cat leaned back into his seat and pouted a moment.

"I'm guessing that means all of them," Lister murmured. Then he turned his attention to Kryten. "What's up?"

"I just wanted to inform you that Mr. Rimmer is back."

"Is he alright?"

Kryten shrugged his shoulders. "Apart from being _completely_ 'smegged off'—"

"No change there…" Lister added under his breath.

"He seems to be fine," Kryten continued without a beat. "However, being stuck inside his light bee for so long, it will take some time for him to reacclimatise. He's in the medi-lab now, curled into a ball, as if he were still inside."

"Why the medi-lab?" Cat asked.

"He insisted on a full medical, just to be sure."

"And why is there a surgical knife in your head?" Lister wondered. He stood up, and tried dislodging it.

"Oh, yes. That," Kryten mumbled indistinctly. "Mr. Rimmer had a bout of rampancy and forgot what was going on. He felt threatened and tried to make a shishkabab out of my head."

Finally, after one big yank, Lister got the knife out. A few whirs and sparks emitted from Kryten's head.

"You alright, Kryten?"

"I'm fine, thank you Deb." Kryten then shook off his minor glitch. He then looked around surprised, as if he had forgotten where he was. "Oh, sir, there you are. I have news."

"I know. Rimmer is back," Lister shook his head in dismay. "I'll talk with him. Afterwards I'll have a look at your circuits." He gave one last glance at the stab mark in Kryten's head, grimacing at it a moment.

* * *

Lister wandered into the medi-lab where Rimmer stood in the middle of the room, half in and out of a dissassociated state. Not wanting to startle or upset the hologram, he gave a gentle clear of his throat before speaking.

"Ah, you," Rimmer was still peeved that he was left to cope on his own; even then he didn't cope too well inside his tiny projection device. "Where were you that whole time? Prancing about with Hitler in a drugged stupor?"

"Well, no actually! I was—" After Rimmer's behaviour had set in, something dawned on him. "Hang on… Are you jealous?"

He whirled around. "Jealous?" he echoed with a sneering tone. He scoffed. "What have I got to be jealous of? Why would you even ask that?"

"Because you have the same tone you get when I talk about Kris."

Rimmer tightened up, already becoming one giant tension knot from the mere mention of _that_ name. His projection flickered for a brief second.

Lister swiftly changed subjects before his hologrammatic friend had another episode. "I just came to see how you were doing."

"How do you think I'm doing?! I was buried alive!"

"You we're stuck inside your light bee."

"Whatever! It was still horrible!" he quavered. He tightly folded his arms in an attempt to comfort himself.

Lister calmly approached him. "I know how you feel…"

He scoffed once more, then rolled his eyes as he shook his head.

"No, I mean it," he insisted. "I was seventeen, working in the MegaMart, part time, as a trolley-parker. After a couple of months I fell in love with cashier number four — we started seeing each other. One evening, we were both on the late shift; we snuck into the stock room… started makin' love on a box of tinned asparagus…"

"You were caught, weren't you?"

Lister vehemently nodded. "She said, 'Someone's coming' — so I jumped into this wooden packing crate and hid. Turned out to be her husband. He asked her what the _hell_ she was doing lying on a box of reduced, tinned, dented veg with no kit on. She said she was trying to get an all-over tan from the lightbulb."

Rimmer sniggered, then sharply, needlessly inhaled. "I don't see how—"

"I'm getting to it," He sighed. "He found me, sealed me up in the box and said he was gonna drop me in the canal. I was _screamin_ ' at him, _pleadin_ ': 'Let me out!' Next thing I knew, I heard the box being opened. I stepped out, bollock naked, right in the middle of the Bootle-players' amateur production of ' _The Importance Of Being Earnest_ '… Since then I've been claustrophobic. So, I know how you felt — how you probably feel now,"

For a while, Rimmer remained silent and nearly emotionless, except for feeling confused. Eventually, slowly, he tilted his head, wondering if he were telling the truth or if he was lying to make him feel better.

"Look, I know it's not _quite_ the same as—"

Rimmer interrupted him with a sudden burst of laughter.

"It's not funny, guy! I'm bearing my innermost here! What kind of reaction is that?"

Eventually his laughs died down. "No, you're right," he said and cleared his throat, changing his tone — briefly. "It's not funny at all. It's… abso-smegging-lutely hilarious!"

"Yeah, fine. Get it out of your system." he said indignantly.

"I'm sorry," he chortled, lying through his chuckles. Slowly but surely, he calmed down. "Honestly, how come you've never told me this before?"

Lister shrugged his shoulders. "It's not something that would come up in normal conversation, is it?" He gave him a thin lipped smile, somewhat embarrassed by bringing up that story — but he wanted Rimmer to know he was in the same boat once, or rather almost the same closed space, on the off chance it'd bring him comfort.

"I'll, erm…" Lister jerked his thumb in the direction of the door. "I'll leave you be. I've gotta go fix Kryten's head, anyway." I'm actuality, he didn't; Kryten had a self-repair function, but Lister couldn't think of a better excuse; he felt uneasy being there, talking about his phobia. He was nearly out of the door when Rimmer spoke up.

"Lister?"

He stopped, wheeled around and went back inside. "Yeah?"

Rimmer kept his eyes fixated on a monitor, staring intently at his test results, meticulously checking if Kryten had missed anything; apart from showing that his T count being higher than a hippy on the last night of Woodstock, the tests were clear. Rimmer could have sworn something else was going on. He shook it off and powered down the monitors, then took some holo-medication for his T count; liquid, of course — after all this time he still couldn't get the hang of pills.

Finally, Rimmer finished his thought. "Thank you. For telling me that story. It couldn't have been easy."

He shrugged again. "As long as it helped."

"To a degree…" Nevertheless, tears shone in his eyes, thinking of events that were still fresh in his memory. Desperate to get his mind off of it, he asked, "What happened to the Cat and Kryten?"

Lister explained that Cat, who hated water because his clothes were dry clean only, was locked in a water tank, Kryten had his head impaled, threatening to keep him from cleaning ever again and Lister almost had his wedding tackle burned off by a laser; without them, he'd never have Jim and Bexley, and ultimately wouldn't have much of a purpose.

"I wonder how they knew our worst fears?" Rimmer wondered.

"They're psychopaths — that's just how they work. There's no rhyme or reason for it."

"I guess not," he said, followed by a heavy, defeated sigh. There was no point in racking his brain to understand why, he knew that — but he still wanted to know. "There is one thing I'm certain of."

"Yeah? What's that?" Lister stared intently and waited for the hologram's response.

"That's the last time I _ever_ trust a psychopath."


End file.
